Archive for the ‘US Gun’ Category

There has been a concentrated push by the anti-gun crew – which apparently includes the CBC – to find some way to prevent the passing of Bill C-391 to eliminate the federal long-gun registry.

The CBC published what they laughingly called a investigative report in which they claimed that the U.S. National Rifle Association was working in Canada to have the federal long gun registry dismantled.

That of course came as one hell of a surprise to those of us who have been involved at various levels in the debate over the years.

The “investigative reporter” based her amazing findings on three separate happenings:

2. The invitation by the Canadian Shooting Sports Association in 2005 to Glen Caroline, the director of the NRA’s Grass Roots division to run a workshop on how to engage an organization’s membership, something that the NRA has been extraordinarily successful in doing.

3. The invitation by the Canadian Shooting Sports Association in 2006 to Sandra Froman, then the outgoing president of the NRA, to be the keynote speaker at the CSSA’s AGM.

And actually a fourth “proof of the pudding’ item that showed (at least to the reporter) that the NRA was up to their elbows in Canada’s gun control battle:

In the year 2000 (again, a decade ago) the NRA produced an infomercial, which was broadcast in the U.S., that pointed out Canada’s slide into gun control and the need for American gun owners to be alert and pro-active. Notwithstanding that the infomercial was directed at U.S. gun owners the CBC article apparently saw this as meddling in Canada’s affairs.

Of course the minute the CBC ran this story the pro-registry, anti-gun crowd were on it like white on rice.

Liberal David McGuinty immediately came forward and insisted that the Conservatives should disclose any funding they had received from the NRA. Oblivious (or studiously ignoring) the fact that the story had stated that the NRA’s constitution specifically barred them from doing that.

McGuinty also intoned, “If the NRA wants to fight its good fight over its views on guns, it should do so in the United States.”

I wonder if these guys ever think about how mindless and pompous they sound when they spout on about issues that they know nothing about but can’t stop their mouth from moving when a microphone appears.

But that is what the NRA is doing; fighting the good fight in the USA and doing it well.

Oh, and this one really amused me.

Michael Bryant, formerly Ontario’s attorney general, said the NRA has been agitating in Canadian political backrooms for years.

“I got elected in 1999 and I became aware soon after of the NRA’s involvement in the debate — not in a huge way, but in a significant way,” he said.

Canadians need to know the role the NRA has played in the gun registry debate, Bryant said

A bold statement, but apparently the investigative reporter neglected to ask Mr. Bryant in just what significant way the NRA had been involved in Canadian backrooms. Or if she did (although based on the reportage in the rest of the article I highly doubt that) he was short on examples.

Unfortunately the supporters of keeping the registry intact become so desperate once there appeared to be a good chance that C-391 might actually get passed that they have had no problem with making up their stories out of whole cloth.

Glen Reynolds, a Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee and the person behind the Instapundit blog, has an interesting article over at Pajamas Media on the 2nd Amendment in the U.S. constitution and the Supreme Court’s Heller decision on Washington DC’s gun ban and the more recent McDonald decision which relates to the city of Chicago’s gun ban.

Read at your leisure, but I was interested in his comments near the end of the article. (Thanks to Michael Bane for the pointer).

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment decisions have made a major difference. In particular, they have offset the gun-control community’s longstanding effort to “denormalize” firearms ownership — to portray it as something threatening, deviant, and vaguely perverse, and hence demanding strict regulation, if not outright prohibition. That effort went on for decades, and received much media support. Two decades ago, it seemed to be working.

But with the Supreme Court saying that it’s clear the Framers regarded individual gun ownership as “necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” that effort must be seen as a failure now. Gun ownership by law-abiding citizens is the new normal, and the Second Amendment is now normal constitutional law. It will stay so, as long as enough Americans care to keep it that way. (Emphasis is mine).

What he speaks of here is what has been happening in Canada with Jean Chretien and Alan Rock, Paul Martin and now the current Federal Liberal Party leader, Michael Ignatieff and his anti-gun prolocutor MP Mark Holland, although we have called it ‘demonizing’ guns and gun ownership. Denormalizing or demonizing: Same thing. Same effect.

One needs only to look at our Federal Firearm’s Act.

Above and beyond the fact that handguns, by the fact that they are hand-held firearms, have been defined as “restricted”, we have others that have been classified as “prohibited” due to barrel length or caliber and a whole list of other firearms that have the same listing because they “look dangerous”.

The reason why a handgun with a 106 mm barrel is classified as restricted and one with a 105 mm barrel length becomes prohibited is something that must only be clear to an Ottawa bureaucrat’s tortured mind.

Then there was the situation with .25 and .32 calibre handguns which, in the mind of those who wrote the legislation, for some reason personified evil incarnate and any handguns chambered to those calibres were automatically delegated to the ranks of the prohibited. Until someone pointed out to those bright people that those were the very same calibres that the world’s competitive shooters used in international competition such as the Olympics. So now there are some (specific) handguns chambered to those calibres that not quite as evil as first thought and have been plucked from the ranks of the prohibited and deposited in the slightly more respectable classification of restricted.

On the face of it, this is all pretty silly, but it was unquestionably the intent of the legislation when written to make firearms ownership increasingly more difficult and to plant the idea in the mind of the public that guns are dangerous and not socially acceptable in Canada.

This philosophy has been the mantra of the Federal Liberal party since Jean Chretien’s time and has been part of the political bark of municipal politicians, notably Mayor David Miller of Toronto, as well as the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, plus others with their own agendas.

Unfortunately in Canada, we don’t have a 2nd Amendment in our Constitution such as the U.S. has, so we can’t hope for the courts to work in our favour.

But as Professor Reynolds says earlier in his article, the solution is eventually political and that even though they have had some success in the U.S. courts, they should not rely on the legal system to fight their battles.

On the other hand, if gun-rights activists sit back and expect the courts to do their work for them now, they will be sadly disappointed. If pressed with further cases (which Gura says he plans to bring), the courts will do some good. But the primary protection for gun rights up to now, and for all constitutional rights, really, is political. Judicial review was intended by the Framers to be a backup system, not the main source of protection. That was intended to come from the people — and realistically, because if people don’t stand up for their own rights, courts are unlikely to take up the slack for long.

This is true in spades in Canada. If hunters, farmers, ranchers, sport shooters, collectors and all others who own and use firearms don’t begin to finally stand up en masse and state their case we will see a steady erosion of our ability (I can’t call them ‘rights’, as we lost that battle with Bill C-68) to use, let alone own those guns.

Two statistical surveys came out at the end of 2009. One being the FBI’s Semiannual Uniform Crime Report and the other the figures for gun sales in the US.

Surprisingly (to some), gun sales in the U.S. were up and crime was down.

Preliminary figures indicate that, as a whole, law enforcement agencies throughout the Nation reported a decrease of 4.4 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention for the first six months of 2009 when compared with figures reported for the same time in 2008. The violent crime category includes murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

This is not what the gun-banners like to hear.

On the other side of the fence many of the pro-gun commentators took it to mean that the combination of the two proved the argument of ‘more guns, less crime’. That in fact having more law-abiding individuals owning firearms had a direct result in a decreasing crime rate.

States with the largest increases in gun ownership also have the largest drops in violent crimes. Thirty-one states now have such laws—called “shall-issue” laws. These laws allow adults the right to carry concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness.

Of course, there those that assailed his work as being flawed. but even by reworking Lott’s figures other statisticians couldn’t come up with any correlation between more guns and increased violent crime. At worst they could only adjust the figures to show that there was essentially no impact.

I am certainly not qualified to debate statisticians, so whether increased gun ownership in the community causes crime to go down or whether the decrease in crime is due to some other arguable factor is beyond my pay scale. But regardless, the facts would appear plain; increased gun ownership is not the monster in the closet that the anti-gunners would have the public believe.

But then again, when you take a look at the British experience, there may be a strong practical example that Lott is dead on the money. In a country that made firearm ownership almost impossible for its honest citizens, things have gone to hell in a hand-basket (actually in more ways than just gun violence, but that’s a different rant).

Gun crime has almost doubled since Labour came to power as a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold.

The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year – a rise of 89 per cent.

In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold.

In eighteen police areas, gun crime at least doubled.

The statistic will fuel fears that the police are struggling to contain gang-related violence, in which the carrying of a firearm has become increasingly common place.

Last week, police in London revealed they had begun carrying out armed patrols on some streets.

The move means officers armed with sub-machine guns are engaged in routine policing for the first time.

When I started to read this article by Paul Craig Robert, I was intrigued by the title: Gun Control: What’s the Agenda?

Now I thought I always knew the gun-banners’ agenda. It was, and is, to get rid of guns owned by civilians. I also thought that I knew some of their motivations.

We’ve heard the arguments hundred of times. Banning guns (so the theory goes) would materially reduce crime, suicides, fatal accidents, violence in the home and make the public domain for all intents and purposes a a safer place and although it might not create a utopia but it would be a step in that direction.

Then there are the animal rights activists who would see the banning of firearms as a way to ending hunting activities. (They could ban bows later – or sooner for that matter).

I hoped that the author might have some new insights on the subject.

As a lead-in, the author pointed out the facts behind New York’s oppressive Sullivan’s Law.

New York state senator Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks, and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.

The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.

He then dealt with the fallacy of the epidemic of gun deaths among children in the U.S. and notes that the White House Offices of National Drug Control Policy says that drugs is one of the leading factors in homicides.

According to the National Drug Control Policy, trafficking in illicit drugs is associated with the commission of violent crimes for the following reasons: “competition for drug markets and customers, disputes and rip-offs among individuals involved in the illegal drug market, [and] the tendency toward violence of individuals who participate in drug trafficking.” Another dimension of drug-related crime is “committing an offense to obtain money (or goods to sell to get money) to support drug use.”

Roberts then writes:

Those who want to outlaw guns have not explained why it would be any more effective than outlawing drugs, alcohol, robbery, rape, and murder. All the crimes for which guns are used are already illegal, and they keep on occurring, just as they did before guns existed.

So what is the real agenda? Why do gun control advocates want to override the Second Amendment. Why do they not acknowledge that if the Second Amendment can be over-ridden, so can every other protection of civil liberty?

There are careful studies that conclude that armed citizens prevent one to two million crimes every year. Other studies show that in-home robberies, rapes, and assaults occur more frequently in jurisdictions that suffer from gun control ordinances. Other studies show that most states with right-to-carry laws have experienced a drop in crimes against persons.

Why do gun control advocates want to increase the crime rate in the US?

Why is the gun control agenda a propagandistic one draped in lies?

At which point he inexplicably goes sideways.

He blames the NRA for fueling the irrational fear of guns through trade advertisements in their members’ only magazine.

The NRA is the largest and best known organization among the defenders of the Second Amendment. Yet, a case might be made that manufacturers’ gun advertisements in the NRA’s magazines stoke the hysteria of gun control advocates.

Full page ads offering civilian versions of weapons used by “America’s elite warriors” in US Special Operations Command, SWAT, and by covert agents “who work in a dark world most of us can’t even understand,” are likely to scare the pants off people who are afraid of guns.

And although he begrudgingly acknowledges that there is some validity to hunting, he apparently believes that gun owners would be better served if it kind of went away.

The same goes for hunters. Recent news reports of “hunters” slaughtering wolves from airplanes in Alaska and of a hunter, indeed, a poacher, who shot a protected rare wolf in the US Southwest and left the dead animal in the road, enrage people who have empathy with animals and wildlife. Many Americans have had such bad experiences with their fellow citizens that they regard their dogs and cats, and wildlife, as more intelligent and noble life forms than humans. Wild animals can be dangerous, but they are not evil.

Americans with empathy for animals are horrified by the television program that depicts hunters killing beautiful animals and the joy hunters experience in “harvesting” their prey. Many believe that a person who enjoys killing a deer because he has a marvelous rack of antlers might enjoy killing a person.

He is apparently ignorant of the fact that the aerial shooting of wolves in Alaska is a State initiative to control the predator population and is not done by “hunters”, and he identifies the person who illegally shot a wolf in the southwest as a poacher whom he apparently associates with legitimate hunters. In fact his whole diatribe on hunters and hunting would indicate that Roberts sits quite comfortably in the anti-hunting camp.

So after wondering what the anti-gun agenda is, we find out that apparently they don’t really have an agenda, it’s just that the NRA (and I presume other magazines) publish advertising for modern guns that “are ugly as sin”, and whose “appearance is threatening, unlike the beautiful lines of a Winchester lever action or single shot rifle, or a Colt single action revolver, or the WW II 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, guns that do not have menacing appearances” which makes people fear guns and makes them want to ban them. And if that isn’t enough those damned hunters are out there killing wolves and other beautiful animals which makes people think that they “might enjoy killing a person”. All enough reason to ban firearms – apparently.

The author then goes on to wax poetic about the joys of target shooting which one could apparently do without fear of the gun banners if it wasn’t for the NRA’s advertising practices and – again – those damned hunters.

It appalls me that there are still those out there, who profess to be “one of us” who have such a simplistic and (dare I say) stupid view of the issues.

One would hope that by now we would have gone beyond the divisions where long gun owners were willing to sell out handgun owners in the hope that doing so would take the focus off their firearms. Or in Britain the owners of double barreled shotguns being willing to sacrifice those who owned pumps and semi-autos.

But apparently the message that the anti-gunners are quite willing to pick us off one by one still hasn’t reached everyone.

Whether it is the anti-gun or the anti-hunting crowd, they know that they cannot get everything they want in one big bucket and are quite happy take their little victories. Unfortunately some of which we give them in the vain hope that they will be satisfied enough to go away and leave us alone. Which of course has never been in their game plan.

There is little question that Canada;s Firearms Act was written in such a manner as to make things more bureaucratically difficult for gun owners in the hope that many would get rid of their guns and drop out of the system. Which many did. The Act relegated some firearms (most notably handguns with barrels 4″ or less in length) to ‘prohibited’ status and while current owners were grandfathered it ensured that no-one else would ever be able to legally acquire them. In that way they would eventually be purged from the system.

Toronto Mayor David Miller has been on a crusade to ban handguns, obviously in a misguided attempt to demonstrate to his electorate that he is “doing something to fight crime”. All gun owners should the strongly and publicly opposing this.

Some years ago there was an attack against bear hunting in B.C. The ban proponents wanted to totally stop the hunting of black bear – not exactly a threatened species in this province. Of course they weren’t able to win that fight, but in the process the Ministry of Environment decided that they would put in a new regulation that would force all bear hunters to salvage the meat of any bears they shot. This was just for black bear. Although some bear hunters already kept the meat (actually good eating), most hunted for the hide. The Ministry thought that bringing the meat in would legitimize the hunt and remove the objections of the environmentalists.

Did it work? Well it removed a bunch of hunters from the system and the environmentalists are currently back again trying to stop bear hunting. And the new solution being floated around to blunt the attack? Put in a regulation to make it a requirement for hunters to salvage grizzly bear meat. Which shows that we have learned little from our past mistakes.

The antis are focused and patient. We, as gun owners and hunters, are divided and complacent. If that doesn’t change, our future is bleak.

In the Obama love-in that marked this election voters were more taken by the message of ‘”hope and change” and the possibility of electing a young, charismatic, black president to lead their country for the next four year than the reality of past voting records and speeches and interviews made prior to becoming a presidential candidate ‘

It was as if the public didn’t want to hear anything that might flaw the perception of a president who would do everything for everyone. And gun owners were no exception.

Obama said that he supported gun rights and that was good enough. But to accept that he had become a supporter of the 2nd amendment it was necessary to ignore his past voting record and public statements which were as anti-gun as the best of them.

Since his election, President Obama has continued to publicly state his support for gun owners, but looking at many of the people surrounding him, as well as some of his comments on related issues, makes it difficult to reconcile his actions with his newly acquired pro-gun stance.

Not a group that a US gun owner would want to rely on to protect his or her 2nd amendment rights and I have probably missed some (notably Hillary Clinton).

But while Obama personally continues to publicly maintain his 2nd amendment support he chose as his appointment to the US Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor who also has a pro-gun control history.

Will these appointees drive an anti-gun agenda in Washington?

Well, back in February, 2009, Eric Holder talked about resuming the assault weapon ban and he used as his justification the drug violence in Mexico.

The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

“As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder told reporters.

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

“I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.” Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.

(snip)

During his confirmation hearing, Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee about other gun control measures the Obama administration may consider.

“I think closing the gun show loophole, the banning of cop-killer bullets and I also think that making the assault weapons ban permanent, would be something that would be permitted under Heller,” Holder said, referring to the Supreme Court ruling in Washington, D.C. v. Heller, which asserted the Second Amendment as an individual’s right to own a weapon.

Sort of, ‘I’m all for gun owner’s rights – right after I pass a few little legislative surprises that I think I can slip by Heller’.

And now the government is using the Mexican government’s problem with their drug cartels as an opportunity to further attack civilian gun ownership in the US, using a government study whose numbers seem a bit suspect.

As time goes on those gun owners who voted for hope and change may find that there has been change but not that which they had hoped for.

U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) recently sponsored H.R. 45, also known as “Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act.”The bill is, at its core and as its name implies, a licensing and registration scheme.

The measure calls for all handgun owners to submit to the federal government an application that shall include, among many other things:a photo; an address; a thumbprint; a completed, written firearm safety test; private mental health records; and a fee.And those are only some of the requirements to be licensed!

The bill would further require the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer, and owner’s address in America.Moreover, the bill would make it illegal to own or possess a “qualifying firearm” — defined as “any handgun; or any semiautomatic firearm that can accept any detachable ammunition feeding device…” [emphasis added] without one of the proposed licenses.

Additionally, the bill would make it illegal to transfer ownership of a “qualifying firearm” to anyone who is not a licensed gun dealer or collector (with very few exceptions), and would require “qualifying firearm” owners to report all transfers to the attorney general’s database. It would also be illegal for a licensed gun owner to fail to record a gun loss or theft within 72 hours, or fail to report a change of address within 60 days.Further, if a minor obtains a firearm and injures someone with it, the owner of the firearm may face a multiple-year jail sentence.

H.R. 45 is essentially a reintroduction of H.R. 2666, which Rush introduced in 2007.H.R. 2666 contained much of the same language as H.R. 45, and was co-sponsored by several well-known anti-gun legislators–including Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.H.R. 45 currently has no co-sponsors.

With the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. constitution being confirmed by their Supreme Court, I look at what this legislation is trying to accomplish and I wonder if it passes the test.

In Canada we learned the difference between rights and privileges a number of years ago when our Federal Firearms Act came into being. We had always talked about our “rights” to own firearms. But they weren’t constitutionally protected as in the U.S. and when licencing came into effect we found to our dismay that our perceived “right” had overnight been converted to a “privilege”. Ergo, you don’t have a right if you have to apply and pay for it.

With that in mind, it seems to my layman thinking that Rep. Rush’s bill, when it talks about licencing to say nothing of all the compliance conditions, is in direct conflict with the constitutional right embodied in the 2nd Amendment.

Hopefully this bill – so far with no co-sponsors – will be nipped in the bud and save a whole lot of legal wrangling.

Watched the inauguration speech today. A pretty good speech and Obama delivers well. The U.S. now has its first black, left-handed president. Actually the 1st black and the 8th left-handed presideent.

For those that are interested, the previous seven were Garfield, Hoover, Truman, Ford, Bush sr. and Clinton. That is, for those of you who are interested.

The proof of the pudding now will be in the months and years to come. Where will the new President take his country.

Actually, in some ways I feel sorry for the guy – probably misplaced as he is certainly very bright and come across as nothing if not confident – as every group and person in the U.S.and maybe worldwide seem to think that Obama is going to advance their particular agenda. But I suspect now that the campaign rhetoric is in the past, Obama will turn out to be a pragmatic leader and will make his decisions based on reality and not on ideological considerations. At least I hope.

However I think predictions that he will be one of the greatest presidents ever is a bit premature.

If I was a U.S. gun owner I would be apprehensive. Not necessarily because of Obama but because the anti-gun crowd has been energized by the thought of a Democratic Congress along with a Democratic president and are poised to push their radical agenda full press.

During the election process Obama tried to align himself with gun owners, saying that he supported the 2nd Amendment, even though his voting record on gun issues indicated otherwise. Maybe, now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, Obama has come to believe that the right to bear arms really does exist. But some of his qualifying statements plus his appointment of Eric Holder as his Attorney General makes one wonder how deep his newly found conviction is. Certainly he has given hope and solace to the anti-gun activists.

There have also been concerns about the appointment of Cass Sunstein to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs due to his anti-hunting and animals rights opinions.

The truly amazing thing about Obama is that he has been able to convince so many people of diverse agendas and views that he is on their side of the issue, even when he is covering both sides. People simply want to believe. Sooner or later he will have to come down on one side of the fence or the other on issues. When that time comes – and it must come – you would expect a backlash. But the American people, at least so far, seem willing to cut him a lot of slack.

NRA president John Sigler has an interesting column on Townhall.com regarding Senator Obama’s strategy leading up to Tuesday’s US Federal election.

The bait-and-switch gimmick of employing rhetorical tricks to hide very real gun control agendas, and to create a fraudulent history to assure that “your gun record does not define your candidacy” are the central lessons offered in a political/propaganda playbook or script proffered by something called the Third Way.

Titled, “Taking back the Second Amendment,” the script is built around a central public opinion finding: “Voters overwhelmingly support the Second Amendment and believe that it confers an individual’s right to own firearms” – a finding confirmed long ago by NRA’s own polling of American public opinion.

The Third Way’s propaganda manual is co-authored by Jim Kessler – who as then-U.S. Rep. Chuck Schumer’s policy director husbanded legislation that became the 1994 Clinton gun ban. This political playbook is a stark study in duplicity and is word-for-word the blueprint for both Barack Obama’s stunningly empty embrace of the Second Amendment, and of the media’s total participation in this intellectually dishonest campaign of deception and obfuscation.

“Don’t let your opponent define you by your record.”

Although Sigler is talking specifically about Obama’s record on gun control, the Senator has successfully used the same strategy to deflect negative news in other areas of his campaign, notably on his associations with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, who was part of the 1960s radical (and violent) Weatherman organization.

Regardless, it would have been impossible for Obama to be successful with this strategy without a very friendly media and some suprisingly poor decisions on the part of the McCain campaign.

For whatever reason McCain’s campaign opted not to press the attack on Senator Obama’s association with the volatile Reverend Wright nor did they make an issue out of Obama’s history on gun control.

On November 4th the decision of the voting public will be made known and on February 5th the interminable analysis will begin, books will be written by winners and losers alike and planning will begin for Election 2012.